PORTLAND — The Nuggets are in it to win it tonight against the Trail Blazers — just as long as their good players don’t play too much.

Denver’s final game of the regular season is tonight at Portland. Denver will clinch the No. 2 spot in the Western Conference playoffs if it wins tonight or if Houston loses to Dallas. The Rockets-Mavericks game starts at 6 p.m. mountain time, and the Nuggets game doesn’t start until 8:30 p.m. So if Denver has the No. 2 seed locked up early in its own game, expect to see a lot of Johan Petro.

The Nuggets have already locked up the division and either the No. 2 or No. 3 seed, but the No. 2 seed guarantees homecourt in the second round of the playoffs. Only Dallas or New Orleans could finish sixth or seventh in the Western Conference, so those are the two options for a first-round matchup.

“I don’t think I’m going to play guys 40 minutes — I think you’re going to see me keep fatigue out of the game,” Nuggets coach George Karl said at Wednesday’s shootaround. “We’re going to play to win it.”

As for the Nuggets, Karl said, “I think to me, there’s a confidence that’s never been there before. There’s always been a nervousness. We always had to talk about how we felt like we could beat a team or that we felt that we’re better. I’ll be honest with you – I think we think we’re better than the people we’re going to play. I think there’s a respect of the challenge. It seems like going into playoffs the last three years, when you’re playing the Lakers or Spurs, there’s a nervousness.”

Nuggets starting forward Kenyon Martin missed four games with a rib strain but returned to the court Monday and will play tonight, too.

“It was good to get back on the court, get up and down, feel the ball, all that — I think it was productive,” Martin said. “Now I don’t have any pain.”

The Nuggets will host the first two games of their first-round series, beginning either Saturday or Sunday.

But if Denver loses tonight and the Rockets win, Denver is No. 3. Tonight, the Spurs play the Hornets.

Benjamin Hochman was a sports columnist for The Denver Post until August 2015 before leaving for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, his hometown newspaper. Hochman previously worked for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes for its Hurricane Katrina coverage. Hochman wrote the Katrina-themed book “Fourth and New Orleans,” published in 2007.

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